Since there is a lot of talk about balancing the space skill set of BOFFs and
so on, i want to present the following concept:

The goal here is to streamline the skills in general to easy development,
flatten the power curve between rank 1 and rank 3 skills and provide ships
with a more versatile setup options.

Instead of the old 3 skill ranks, each with 9 individual learned levels,
i suggest to combine them all into a single skill with 10 levels.
I also suggest to reduce the top end, level 10, of the skills to be around the
same cap as a maxed out rank 2 skill as we have them now.
This will flatten the power curve of the skills at the upper end.
Furthermore all skills should be available for all BOFF ranks, this will raise
lower end of the power curve. Creating a much flatter, more progressive power
curve for the skills in general.

BOFFs stations,
I would suggest to rename them into Consoles, and rename the existing consoles
into systems, Engineering Systems, Tactical Systems etc. This would present a
more logical naming scheme in my opinion.

The consoles will have a MK, which ranks from 1 to 4, which corresponds to the
current rank system. A ensign console would be a MK1 console for example.
Each MK of a console after MK1, the basic console, grants a bonus to skills
used on that console of 10%, so MK1=0%, MK2=10%, MK3=20% and MK4=30% bonus
to the skill used.
This also allows consoles as items that provide small extra boni, for example an additional 2%.

Example, Billy slots a cannon rapid fire skill in a mk3 slot, therefore that
rapid fire skill gets a 20% bonus from that console, while Joe slots a
eng team skill in a mk1 console and he gets no bonus from it.

To prevent low level players from raising their BOFFs skill to fast I suggest to
alter the costs for them, to make players have to chose what and how to raise
them while they level up. Something along the lines of 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600,
3200, 6400, 12800, 25600, 51200 skill points for each of the ten levels of
a skill. This way players have a flatter curve in BOFF skill progression, and
since the cost for maxing out a skill is pretty high it also allows some more
progression for level capped payers to max out their BOFF skills.

Converting existing BOFFs to the new system:
I suggest to convert the skills as follows, a rank 1 skill gets into a a level 1
skill of the new system, a rank 2 skill becomes a level 4 skill and a rank 3
skill a level 7 skill.